The Science of Happiness - How to be Happy in Life? FutureIQ

6,206 views Wait, is this logic right? • Dec 20, 2024

Slog Reference: The Science of Happiness

Description

In this video, you will learn real ways to be happier. We will show you simple things that are proven by science to make you feel better. You can learn how to stay away from stress and sad feelings, and make smart choices to be happy. We will teach you easy things to do to feel good, have better friends, and be in charge of your happiness. No need for expensive teachers or coaches, just real advice that works. Watch the video and start feeling happy today!

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Money Can Buy Happiness: https://youtu.be/yxa_jAl5Rs4
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Prisoner's Dilemma: https://youtu.be/y9kOyRu6FGU
World Is Improving: https://youtu.be/2l0jnwf-2kA

Hope you enjoyed FutureIQ by Navin Kabra and Shrikant Joshi. Do hit us up on Twitter:
@ngkabra http://twitter.com/ngkabra
@shrikant https://twitter.com/shrikant

Listen it on the podcast provider of your choice: https://tapthe.link/FutureIQRSS

Sources:
List Of Happiness: https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10902-019-00199-3.pdf
Money Can Make You Happy: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2016976118

00:00 How To Be Happy?
01:26 How Scientists Study Happiness?
03:13 Positive And Negative Emotions?
06:16 Problems That Causes Stress & Sadness
08:00 What Is The Proactive Approach To Be Happy?
15:25 Is The Pursuit Of Happiness Meaning Of Life?

#futureiq #happylife

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Transcript

- Shri Kant in school did you have a subject how to be happy no College how come they spend time teaching you calculus but not something as important how to be happy is it because science doesn't know this why would science teach me meditation and you know aagra chitt and all of that actually science does spend a lot of time studying happiness okay there's lots of research studies and they do also have recommendations that would improve your life satisfaction science has recommendations on how to do meditation and eag and all of that science has recommendations on how to increase your happiness okay this is interesting go on how do you how to be happy the answer is

0m 49s stop being unhappy that's not fair naen no but now you're pulling my leg no seriously okay one very useful mental model to have in life is called v negativa We did an episode on that yes instead of trying to fix a problem by adding new things and processes to it take see if you can remove something right so look into your life find out the things that are making you unhappy okay and then try to do less of that so less of Killa in my life yes less of brel in my life well brel is still fine but one of the basic techniques scientists use to to study happiness right and it has become possible in the

1m 33s last 15 years because of mobile phones right what they do is take a large number of people like tens of thousands of people are given an app that they download on their phone okay and at random times during the day the app pops up and says how do you feel you know I mean from happy to sad you note that and then after that they ask them what are you doing right now right that's it and just collect millions of samples of this okay so now throughout the day and for months and for years you have data of what were people doing and how did it make them feel okay right and a few other questions but basically now you

2m 14s analyze this data and you can correlate what they were doing what they were worrying about with how they were feeling correct right correct so and this is a very high quality data set to understand happiness slightly observational but still high quality yeah yeah yeah so unfortunately we cannot do a randomized controlled study on this right we cannot like catch a bunch of people and tell half of them now we are going to torture you so that you'll be happy for the next three years that will be a fun study except will not pass the ethical board exactly so unfortunately we have to do observational studies right but one of the big things that came out of this

2m 56s right was that they found that it it is much easier to reduce sadness than it is to increase happiness ah by stopping whatever is worrying you by taking away things that are stressing you worrying you Etc if you break up your emotions they found that there are four positive emotions and seven negative emotions that are sort of important for this particular study right okay so positive emotions are I feel proud I feel confident I feel interested I feel good negative emotions are I feel afraid I feel angry I feel bad I feel bored I feel sad I feel stressed I feel upset you know what I was thinking all of the positive emotions are exactly what I

3m 39s feel when I'm shooting these episodes and all of the negative emotions are what I felt when I was writing my resignations at all my previous jobs but you will notice that the positive emotions were a little fuzzy and you're not very clear as to what should you do to get there yeah there's no quantifying them correct whereas for the negative emotions there is usually like a specific activity happening right now or a specific problem that you do less of that and the emotion will be less right I'll give a few examples yeah so a lot of anger or being upset right and sometimes even uh being afraid comes from suspicion or resentment of people in your life right yep yep and you can

4m 27s reduce suspicion and resentment right so what you have to do is you have to increase the trust in your relationships right we did an episode called the evolution of trust you have to uh take a look at that uh the prisoners dilemma episode yeah so you can actually increase the trust in your life and that will reduce the suspicion and resentment in your life very interesting yeah another problem is you know fighting or getting upset about things that you cannot change right that causes stress that causes you to feel bad that causes you to feel upset sometimes it causes you to feel upset right what you have to do is learn to focus on okay this

5m 15s problem can I change it yes then you go and do something about it and the things that you cannot do something about just learn to accept it right a lot of the problems the bad negative emotions we feel isn't because of the thing happening but it is because that we are don't accept the thing that is happening the bad thing that's happening and we want to fight against it right reduce that reminds me of the reminds me of the Serenity Prayer we've discussed it inep absolutely right uh in fact I looked at our episodes and we have Shot 14 episodes which talk about how to be happy how to be less unhappy how to be

5m 58s happy right and not going to mention all the episodes but let's just go through it so basically we've discussed these techniques before but uh we are sort of compiling all of them into one single uh um major macro technique kind of a thing yeah so another problem is perfectionism right you want everything to be perfect and when it is not perfect you get stressed ADHD people represent yes so you want to learn to accept good enough good enough in parenting good enough in your homework good enough in your job right look up the parable of the pottery class that will give you ideas for this right yeah uh and yeah good enough in parenting sounds scary but I have come

6m 46s to realize that it is good enough no no there is an entire book called good enough parenting which is recommended by child psychiatrists and psychologists okay oh okay I have to read that another problem for many people is social media social media makes them feel bad there is lots of research showing that since people got mobile phones and social media lives have gotten worse mental health has gotten worse especially for girls right and what is happening in a lot of social media is comparisons yeah right you feel bad and not just that but what's happening is that you are comparing what they put up on their social media with what is happening in your life right you compare their

7m 35s highlights to your behind the scenes exactly so you want to reduce that the other thing you want to reduce is outrage and doom scrolling right so I mean social media is optimized to show you all the ways in which the world is bad right but in reality the world is uh getting better right check out the link yeah done an episode on that as well so all okay these are ways to not be unhappy but if I want to say be happy like proactively do something to be happy is there anything I can do of course so similar kinds of studies where they looked at what were people doing and how they were feeling if you look at

8m 17s the parts where they were happy and look at what they were doing at that time right scientists analyze that put them in a large number of categories and then not just that but they also put a score next to it saying how easy this is to do or not do right oh winning a lottery is going to make you happy but it's not easy to win a lottery right so they made this list ordered by Maximum Impact on your happiness and minimum effort right and let me just read out the first few items from this list right so one is intimacy with the Romantic partner spend more time with them nice time don't fight right go to a theater or a dance

8m 59s or a concert right I can't dance but I can definitely enjoy a concert yes you can watch people dancing or that is also something you find difficult to do it gives me a complex but yeah I get what you mean go on right so uh if you are that kind of person then going to a exhibition or a museum or a library Sports running exercise right these things U it's difficult to start on them but once you start it's it's easy to maintain moment M momentum and at the end during and at the end you feel really good about it yeah gardening singing performing don't have to do it for other people that will stress you out but in your bathroom you

9m 42s should sing always do ask my neighbors talking to friends chatting socializing okay this is a good use of social media not the bad use of social media right and do it in person also just walks in nature watching Birds there is research showing that if you live in a place that has 14 more species of birds then that's equivalent to a 10% raise well I do a lot of bird watching but not the kind this one says go so I'm not going to go through that entire list what is the list called just just we will we have a link there and we will also scroll the list up here but yeah that's I mean

10m 24s there's a whole bunch of lwh hanging fruit that can improve how you feel right and you just do enough of improve how you feel throughout the day and overall your day is better like stack multiple little things that improve your mood and give you happiness and then you get a a large chunk of happiness but forget individual little activities right if you think of what can I do more in a big picture long-term sense the most important part of happiness in your life is people right so have a friend Circle right get married all happiness research shows that in the longterm married people are happier than unmarried right this goes against conventional wisdom but I agree with him

11m 07s uh well actually and by married I mean long-term committed relationship H there is a tiny little hitch with the statement get married because it's not that simple man to get married you have to do a lot of manner to get married first you have to find a partner to get married do a lot of me after getting married also but overall that happens and it's worth it okay there's a 30% Gap in happiness between married and single people but you know other than that also just having people so shiku is wrong is that wrong absolutely the science says that you don't okay scientifically proven get married go on sorry you were saying have a friend Circle and activities with people

11m 55s so you know have a hobby where you get together with a bunch of people people who have the same hobby right badminton or running or whatever join an NGO right or you know just even religion is very good for happiness right if you are doing religious activities together with your religious group regularly uh that helps right going to church every Sunday going to a Bajan Mand every Saturday all of that are uh are good yeah I am not in agreement with him on the religion bit but I understand the science behind yeah go on don't join a religion so that you can take swords out and go kill people right join a religion so that you can do

12m 37s happy religious activities together this is what I like about him he instantly gets what I'm trying to say without saying it and then he goes and says it that's people right the other thing is do long-term things which reduce your stress right so one big area of stress is that suddenly some expense comes and you don't have the money for it right or a sudden medical emergency yeah so have an automatic savings plan yeah right which forces you to save every month and then you have money in your bank say for a rainy rainy day for rainy day because there will be rainy days and then when you have money in the bank saved for a

13m 19s rainy day you feel less stress similarly have decent health insurance which will take care of your any sudden Health uh emergency right H wow okay that's a lot of things that can be done proactively as well as reactively I'm not done okay there is more one of the most important things to be happy is to not even try to be happy don't do things to make yourself happy do things to help other people be happy oh be generous right okay yeah and it turns out that that makes makes you happy just we are wired weird it's not weird I mean helping another person out is a special kind of happiness and I hope everybody gets a chance to enjoy that happiness

14m 09s and especially if you have done your automatic savings so you have a little extra money you can use that to be generous you can help people but more generally if you have money you can use it to buy happiness okay money can make you happy we'll do an entire separate episode on that money can buy happiness not just that but be healthy right bad health is one of the commonest causes of long-term misery and long-term unhappiness so two important things there regular exercise and get good sleep that's that's the funny thing about health and happiness unhappiness is the reason for bad health is the reason for unhappiness and it's like a spiral it's a spiral and

14m 56s you can get a positive spiral going good health happiness good health happiness yes exercise sleep well exercise sleep well right that's also a spiral because sometimes some people have difficulty sleeping because they didn't exercise during the day but if you do exercise it's a little easier to also sleep there a quick note we were not endorsing the mattress company sleeping well is what he was talking about bad joke but I more Curious to hear about this money buying happen his thing so I'm going to go pester him a little more now any closing thoughts on the whole matter I think think one commonly asked philosophical question is that is the pursuit of happiness the meaning of life right it's

15m 38s 42 but yeah that is also another question so I think that in life it is important to have the right attitude right so going for happiness in the long term is a good thing trying for happiness on every short-term thing right that's not necessarily a good thing interesting because some short-term hardship is necessary for long-term happiness right so you can't try to make everything comfortable everything convenient everything easy for yourself all the time right um I mean you know that quote right Hard Times give rise to strong individuals strong individuals give rise to good times and then good times give rise to weak individuals so there should be and then some hard times weak indiv ual give

16m 29s rise to Hard Times so circle cycle repeats other um point I want to make is that you know your success in life depends on your ability to make good decisions right but your happiness depends on your ability to not care about the outcomes of those decisions right this is a quote by noal ravikant but what you will notice is that it's just a rephrasing of kadikar yep right so learn to be happy with the systems you follow the process you follow learn to not be unhappy if you don't reach your goals and I still don't remember the second line I have tried a lot but I can't remember the second line doesn't matter you can go check out the entire

17m 19s episode and all of the other 13 episodes that nav's referenced in this uh very scientific way to be happy and I hope you implement some of these in your own life I will definitely be implementing a lot of these in mine Shri Kant naen future IQ